This may seem like linguistic nit-picking to begin with, but I must admit to being puzzled by this notion of ‘public intellectual’ that concerns us here. Are not intellectuals by definition inherently ‘public’? What on earth would they otherwise be? Well, let us rule out from the onset some ‘secret’ intellectuals, on the mode of this notorious ‘secret footballer’ who anonymously tells all about the antics of his profession. The same goes for any possible ‘closet’ intellectuals, who would be keeping up boorish and bigoted appearances against their natural tendencies. We are left then with the antonymic deduction that some intellectuals might actually be ‘private’. To be sure, this category can include all those among us who enjoy grumbling about this or that over breakfast, or who threaten to write indignant letters to The Times. But, much more ominously, besides such advice-giving kibitzers or know-all pundits, could there really be out there some ‘private’ intellectuals – that is, intellectuals for hire, at the service of some corporate interests, agitating in various think tanks or lobbies in support of, say, global warming, the weapons trade, the tobacco industry, the Big Society and suchlike genetically modified organisms?

Well, no, not really. Pushing the concept to its limits helps us prise out its core contents. Intellectuals, we are instinctively reassured, are by definition disinterested, non-partisan, not-for-profit, not on payroll – or so we would like to believe. Far from being commissioned to proffer their opinions, they rather do so out of some essential or inner compulsion, enhanced by an indubitably vainglorious expectation to be heard. Thus intellectuals, when acting in this capacity, are intrinsically ‘public’ in at least two ways. First, by expressing themselves in the public arena, they seek to broadcast their views as widely and intelligibly as possible; in doing so, they also express their opinions and commitments openly, irrespective of the opprobrium they may subsequently face from their rulers or their employers. Second, intellectuals genuinely (if at times naively) believe that the stance they take is necessarily for the common good, that they have the general interest at heart, or rather in mind, when they bring their specific expertise to bear on some wider issues that are, or should be, of public concern. This moral stance follows from another connection, perhaps more historical in nature, between intellectuals and the public: upon the quintessential ‘intellectual’ engagement that was the Dreyfus affair in late 19th-century France, intellectuals have felt a certain sentiment of obligation vis-à-vis the Republic (or its equivalents), which, by ensuring free and secular education for all, has enabled the more intellectually talented, whatever their social or economic backgrounds, to become, precisely, the new intellectual elite of the nation. Upon this, intellectuals feel almost duty-bound (and often, let us admit it, also ego-strokingly eager) to mobilize their painstakingly acquired critical, analytical or synthetic expertise beyond its traditional or disciplinary remits towards the public arena.

It has been observed in the EAA session that inspired this discussion, and in Sarah and Liv's introduction to this section, that among the polymorphous plethora of intellectuals still proliferating in our post-May 1968 era, archaeologists have rarely, if ever, been recognized as such and given credence, or indeed appealed to, by the all-powerful media. Some will consider it important, with much justification, that we archaeologists learn to raise the ‘intellectual’ profile of our profession, as distinct from its erudite contents or its entertainment value. In this respect, the next exciting discovery granted a minute's exposure time on the regional news, or the latest million-pounds’-worth-metal-detected-hoard-of-incredibly-precious stuff, alas soon to be lost to the nation, should be taken as opportunities to make the case that archaeology is not limited to this basic form of romantic empiricism popularized by Howard Carter or Indiana Jones. Archaeology, we should be able to claim, is actually a mature, thought-provoking, debate-enhancing discipline relevant to our contemporary conditions and challenges – including, if I may follow up on the above example, the proposition that all fortuitously discovered archaeological remains, be they dazzling or dull, need be considered outright as scientific and cultural resources, at once the property and the responsibility of the nation state (see Schlanger Reference Schlanger and Silberman2012b).

Be that as it may, my argument here for the intellectual reach of archaeology stems from another perspective: leaving aside the medium and the message bearer, it is the message itself that needs to be worked on. Indeed, it will prove useful to identify, proactively, the kinds of public debate to which we might seek to contribute, as intellectuals and as archaeologists. History, its nature and unfolding, constitutes such a subject matter, seemingly arcane and remote from public consciousness, and yet thoroughly implicated in structuring world views and in instrumentalizing dispositions. Here, then, are three recent examples of such historical-cum-archaeological intellectual topicality, which, though originating in specific contexts in France and in Britain, may actually prove to have some more universal relevance.

The first case comes from France, or rather from some Frenchman's view of Africa. I am referring to the notorious speech pronounced by former president Nicolas Sarkozy in Dakar, Senegal, on 26 July 2007. True to his franc-parler image, ‘you'll get it from me as it is’, President Sarkozy set to address head-on the legacies and prospects of the African continent. Besides allowing for some responsibility of the French colonial policies of yesteryear, and after exhorting his audience, especially the ‘African youth’, to grab themselves by the bootstraps and sieze the day, President Sarkozy went on to muse,

Without necessarily going back to G.W.F. Hegel's portrayal of immutable Africa in his Philosophy of History, readers of Johannes Fabian's Time and the other (Reference Fabian1983) or Eric Wolf's Europe and the people without history (Reference Wolf1982) will have a sinking feeling of déjà vu. The anguish of history that torments modern man, indeed! As can be imagined, the Dakar speech generated a veritable outpouring of outrage within and beyond the francophone world, and also a range of what are effectively intellectual responses from historians, anthropologists and thinkers across Africa and in France, both in the media and in dedicated publications. Among the latter can be mentioned such titles as L'Afrique de Sarkozy. Un déni d'histoire (Chrétien Reference Chrétien2008), L'Afrique humiliée (Traoré Reference Traoré2008) or again Petit précis de remise à niveau sur l'histoire africaine à l'usage du Président Sarkozy (Konaré Reference Konaré2008). Spanning from the earnest to the ironic, these reactions usefully marshal expert knowledge and critical understanding to expose for its worth the idea that African man has yet to ‘enter history’, an idea as deeply flawed conceptually as it is factually untenable. Historians and philosophers have dwelt much on the former aspect, with its neo-colonial ‘essentialization’ and ‘naturalization’ of African man. Archaeologists for their part clearly find axes to grind on the latter aspect, boosting the topicality of their otherwise fairly esoteric chrono-cultural and stratigraphic investigations, and showing that also the prehistory of the Others is a topic well worthy of critical investigations (Schlanger and Taylor Reference Schlanger, Taylor, Schlanger and Taylor2012). Indeed, a particularly thorough demonstration of the historical depth, richness and diversity of the African continent was provided by the international scholarly community at the 13th Congress of the Pan-African Association for Prehistory and related studies held in July 2010 at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar . . . that is, with some retributive irony, in the very venue where the speech in question had been delivered!

It may well be (to reproduce the cruelly apposite pun by Senegalese leader Abdoulaye Wade) that President Sarkozy was betrayed here by his ‘negro’ – this being the French slang for ‘ghostwriter’ or ‘speech-writer’, a certain Henri Guaino. However, as our second case will show, there is no doubting the presidential conviction that history is emphatically something to be ‘entered into’ – why else would there be such pressure, back in Paris, for its reification into a ‘Maison de l'histoire de France’? The contrast is great, but nevertheless ideologically coherent: while Others have no history to speak of, or are locked out it, we contemporary Frenchmen and -women deserve to have it pre-chewed and force-fed on us. Indeed, leaving aside the universalist trappings of ‘1789-and-all-that’, French history is, according to this view, necessarily a national one, one that can be gathered into a single edifice, structured around a cumulative ‘gallery of time’ that displays the great sequence of our civil and military history, a chronological narrative to be episodically revisited (conjecture here busloads of suburban schoolkids issue de l'immigration, as they are called) as a reinvigorating touchstone or antidote, a mausoleum in which any threats of decline or disintegration are transcended by the celebration of our identity and our destiny. It is the case that France has no central historical museum as such (unlike, say, Berlin or Barcelona), but rather a series of disconnected establishments, each with their traditions and modes of display, specializing in different time periods: the national museum of the Middle Ages at Cluny Abbey, the national museum of the Renaissance at Ecouen, or indeed the Musée des antiquités nationales (recently renamed the Musée d'archéologie nationale) at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Some sort of relations between these separate entities could well be of educational and cultural benefit, but not necessarily when the project, heralded by President Sarkozy shortly after his election, has been carried forwards by the thankfully short-lived quasi-Orwellian ‘Ministry of Immigration, Integration and National Identity’.

Figure 1 Despite the recent human-induced damages to its Palaeolithic paintings, the cave of Lascaux remains a veritable lieu de mémoire (see Demoule Reference Demoule and Nora1992). Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy fittingly took the opportunity of his visit (on 12 September 2010) to announce that the Maison de l'histoire de France will be based in central Paris, on the site of the National Archives (© Philippe Wojazer).

On both professional and intellectual grounds, protests emerged from the community of museologists and historians. Besides arguing that the proposed project represented an outdated and obsolete conception, these intellectuals also decried the interference of the political apparatus in the establishment and dissemination of historical truth (Babelon et al. Reference Babelon, Backouche, Duclert and James-Sarazin2011; Backouche and Duclert Reference Backouche and Duclert2012) – much as they had protested a few years earlier at the creation of a museum of ‘first arts’ at the Quai Branly, following the hobby of collecting African masks of former president Jacques Chirac. Even with the best of intentions, such an official history risks being misleading. A case in point concerns this cherished image of France as a land of refuge and asylum, readily assimilating needy and deserving foreigners (intellectuals included). Yet sorting out those who were ‘always here’ from the migrants generously accepted into the fold posits an ‘eternal France’ of the kind long challenged by sociologists and historians (see Mauss Reference Mauss and Schlanger2012; Lebovics Reference Lebovics1992), as well as archaeologists (Demoule Reference Demoule2012). Indeed, archaeologists have the scientific expertise to demonstrate through material culture, settlement patterns and burial practices just how inherently composite is this thing called France, a recent national reality that will be all the stronger for acknowledging that it is build of consent and participation, rather than birthright or origins.

In the wake of the recent presidential election, the Maison de l'histoire de France is now all but ancient history – and although the powers that be could have resorted to the convenient excuse of the economic crisis to unceremoniously ditch this €80 million project, they did actually condemn it also for its ideological dubiousness. Let us at this point cross the Channel to reach the last case study where, in my view, a measure of ‘preventive’ archaeological-cum-intellectual intervention is urgently called for. At stake here is not some regrettable speech or controversial institution, but rather a piece of legislation that many seem to approve of: the Localism Bill, as enacted in late 2011 by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat ‘coalition’ government. Cutting through the technicalities, this seems to be but the latest move in a wider-ranging tendency towards decentralization and devolution of powers in the United Kingdom. To judge by its official webpage, the Ministry of Local Communities in charge of its implementation is something of an antithesis to the Ministry of National Identity in France, albeit equally alarming:

When politicians formally endorse such a world view, it can only be because they expect financial savings or electoral gains to be made, and preferably both. One does not need a PPE degree from Oxford to understand that ‘pushing power outwards and downwards’ is a good means of strangulation, the obverse of the Peter Principle whereby decision making is ‘shifted down’ to the level where it can no longer be effective, informed or long-sighted. For one, the expertise available locally may simply not be competent enough for taking and implementing decisions regarding the historic environment, even if it is well attuned to local lore and pressure groups. As well, most local councils and authorities (now generously left to fend for themselves as best they can, without guidance or financial support) will in any case systematically prioritize hospital beds at the expense of county archaeologists and heritage managers – who, in proportion, cost probably as much as a pillowcase laundry bill. Nor will these local authorities be able to attach much value to expenditures in the ‘culture’ sector in general, a form of enforced philistinism recently demonstrated by Newcastle City Council (see the cuts website monitoring by Rescue Archaeology at http://rescue-archaeology.org.uk and https://rescue.crowdmap.com, and by The Guardian at www.guardian.co.uk/culture/interactive/2012/aug/03/europe-arts-cuts-culture-austerity).

Localism may well prove to be a sinkhole in which vast tracts of archaeology (both the material record and the discipline dealing with it) risk disappearing. Upon the sigh-of-relief financial disengagement of the central powers, and their ready divestment of legal responsibilities (see below), no local authority will be able to afford the next Staffordshire hoard, let alone employing a much more mundane but nonetheless indispensable small-finds specialist. As the cunning plan of the (now former) culture secretary would have it, making the professionals redundant will only encourage ‘inclusiveness’ towards the voluntary sector, by definition local and so conveniently cheap. So much so that the Institute for Archaeologists itself, normally in favour of the invisible hand, has now risen to implore the relevant authorities to maintain their curators, lest developers, without any compulsion to undertake archaeological mitigations, will simply cut commercial outfits out of the equation.

Furthermore, even without such erosion in controlling and enforcing mechanisms, the formal legal propositions of the Localism Bill represent by themselves a worrying dilution of historic-environment protection. As if to compound the far too ‘light-touch’ treatment of heritage in the National Planning Policy Framework (‘everything must fit on a single page’), the Neighbourhood Development Plans promoted by the Localism Bill would apparently make it possible to override provisions for the protection of heritage that is of more than local interest (assuming that these local interests amount to more than the current aspirations of unrepresentative mavericks or profit-motivated entrepreneurs). This would seriously affect the conservation of historic town centres, for example, and could also lead to ‘unintentional, but potentially very serious damage to, and total loss of, nationally and internationally important undesignated archaeology’. As this memorandum by English Heritage further reminds us, there are elements of the historic environment

Upon this, we archaeologists clearly need to act. And we should do so not simply as vested-interest professionals, anxious about the exercise of our trade, but also as public-spirited intellectuals, concerned, at a broader scale, with making the world a better place. Besides pointing out some unwelcome effects of localism, we are also uniquely placed to explore its roots. Alongside historians and sociologists of urban and rural Britain, we can expose for its worth this idealized notion of ‘local community’, basking in the glory of its cricket grounds to the peals of the bells (‘as stands the church clock at ten to three, and is there honey still for tea?’), a nostalgic and largely illusory Cranford-like hamlet whose inhabitants ‘have lived for thousands of years according to the seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, who only knew the eternal renewal of time’? Indeed, what was a dubious stereotype already on the banks of the Senegal is probably as much of a cliché on the banks of the Cam. Shall we not rather argue, as archaeologists, documentation and interpretations firmly in hand, that humans have always existed at different scales; that settlements have consistently been linked to others, close and afar; that raw materials, ideas and technologies have always roamed around; that long-distance encounters of social, cultural, economic and political kinds have been facts of daily life long before some bluestones were dragged down the Salisbury Plain?

Figure 2 Between the burial grounds of French kings and the national football stadium, the town of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, embodies some of the complexities of ‘localism’. As an attempt to enhance sentiments of citizenship through territorial practice, this Côte d'Ivoire-born potter (one of the 25 per cent of the town's population born outside France) exercises her traditional skills to reproduce local medieval ceramics for sale to international tourists (© Unité d'archéologie de la ville de Saint-Denis/Ministère de la culture et de la communication).

Without developing these arguments further here, I hope that their thrust comes across: we archaeologists do need to be bolder; to be self-critical, but also plainly critical; to bring our hard-earned (and, en passant, predominantly public-funded) scientific expertise to bear, in ways that are relevant and constructive and imaginative, on the problems of the age. To round up with the above example, it seems to me that if archaeologists were now to come together and debate a Margaret Thatcher-like proposition – ‘Has there ever been such a thing as a local community?’ – we will be bound to be heard, and even heeded, as public intellectuals.